Enterprises collect large volumes of digital data and often want to integrate data from various sources and analyze the data. Digital data may be stored in databases, spreadsheets, text documents, online websites, or other forms of electronic records. Integrating data from these sources typically requires processing the data into a standardized format. Each enterprise may have a preferred standardized format that requires customization for their particular use. Data flow design systems provide enterprises tools to design custom data flows for integrating and analyzing their data. For example, a business uses data flows to process raw sales data and generate sales reports to drive business operation decisions.
Existing data flow design systems may not be flexible to changes in data flows over time. Input data sources often change due to various factors, e.g., an enterprise uses new data collection or database management software or the enterprise wants to analyze new types of data. Users of existing design systems need to manually update previously designed data flows to accommodate these changes, which can be time consuming, tedious, and prone to errors.